[A clinical assessment of the computed tomographic potentials in the diagnosis of postoperative peritoneal abscesses]

Modern diagnosis of postoperative abscesses in the peritoneal cavity keeps on being a difficult problem in abdominal surgery. They often develop against the background of the operation and the underlying disease, which masks the clinical course. Fourty-six patients suspected of having postoperative abscess were examined. Computer tomographic examination presented unequivocal data on the presence or absence of abscess in 42 patients (91.3 per cent), whereas in 6.5 per cent the conclusion was not emphatic for abscess and in 2.2 per cent there was lack of coincidence. This makes the method particularly suitable when other methods fail to produce explicit evidence for abscesses and the clinical suspicion remains.